Festival de Flamenco de Jerez de la Frontera (Flamenco Festival of Jerez)

This is going to be a tourist story.  I´m back in Jerez and since returning, in spite of best intentions, first I caught a cold and then was overwhelmed by the annual, 2-week Festival de Flamenco de Jerez de la Frontera.  The festival ended on Saturday, March 8, and I ended up taking a class in rhythm/palmas (fun, fun, fun) and in dance (seguiriyas-lots of work but also really great).

Here's the theater where the major festival events were presented.

The rhythm/palmas class was with Luis de la Tota.  Of course I forgot to bring my camera to take pictures, but here´s a photo of Luis that I have from when he was acting in Domino:  Caught in the Crisis.  

 Luis de la Tota, palmero extraodinaire.

The dance class was with María del Mar Moreno, and she really wanted us to work.  That´s good.  That´s how you learn.  But I´ll just mention that on the final day of class, when we had gone all the way through the choreography about five times - to say nothing of working on individual sections - and our time was up, a student much younger than me said something like "Man, I´m exhausted.  At least now we can rest."

María heard this and said, "You´re all much younger than I am, and you´re saying you´re tired?  No good.  Let´s go through the choreography again."

And so we did.

Including me, even though I am NOT younger than she is.  But that´s not a problem.  I have lots of energy.